WHAT IS CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)?

Customer Relationship Management or CRM in short can be defined as a strategy to comprehend an organization’s existing/potential customer’s behaviours and needs by developing stronger relationships with them. In marketing it is understood that repeat customer are more profitable as compared to new ones, hence it becomes vital for business heavily rely on this strategy to enhance their bottom lines.
CRM as a strategy depends on putting together segments of information about customers and market trends in order for business to sell and market their products and services more efficiently and effectively. The crux of using this strategy is to use human resources and technology to expand insights into customer behaviour and finding ways to add value to those customers on an ongoing basic.
Main goals of executing CRM strategy can be listed as below –
1. Retention of existing customers while finding new ones
2. Providing better customer service to existing customers as a post sale strategy
3. Providing information about products and services to customers on what they might be interested
4. To efficiently cross sell and up sell products and services to customers

WHAT ARE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) SYSTEMS?

CRM Software is a tool that complements a business’ CRM strategy by consolidating customer information and intelligently reports them for easy comprehension by business users. A CRM software primarily functions around the following
1. Efficient documentation of conversations between the business and the customer
2. Automation of CRM strategy work flows such as marketing automation of repetitive tasks for marketing, sales force automation to prevent duplicate efforts, contact centre automation to reduce tiresome aspects of contact/call centre jobs etc.
3. Offers sub systems such as calendar, tasks, alerts and more capabilities for efficient tracking of CRM strategy
4. Management of clients, contacts, contracts, sales leads and wins and many more.

WHAT IS SALES FORCE AUTOMATION (SFA)?

Sales Force Automation or SFA in short is the key area in the overall success of CRM strategy that drives efficiencies in sales processes. It can be defined as an automated process to handle sales related tasks of a business. It automates tasks such as sales processing – sales funnel and sales pipeline management, opportunity management, customer interaction and conversation tracking, sales reporting, sales team performance and evaluation etc.

WHAT IS SALES FORCE EFFECTIVENESS (SFE)?

Sales Force Effectiveness or SFE in short is defined as a sales strategy that facilitates sales teams to improve their efficiency on the field by analysing parameters on both sales and efforts and working on areas of improvement. Sales force effectiveness also means to effectively manage all customer touch points in the organization for better segmentation and targeting efforts.

WHY CRM FOR PHARMA INDUSTRY?

It is well known that high competition, highly segmented products and stiff regulatory scrutiny have brought upon Biotech companies, pharma companies and medical device manufacturers unprecedented set of challenges when it comes to access to physicians. These unparalleled challenges have undoubtedly given rise to these companies shift gears with technology and access multiple channels in pursuit to put in place best of customer strategies.
Dealing with such challenges has come in the size and shape of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that have been tailor made for companies in context. CRM greatly helps these companies to streamline the course of gathering and analyzing sales information to improve access to data, accuracy and efficiency.

HOW TO DRIVE SALES FORCE EFFECTIVENESS? – A CRM PERSPECTIVE

Customer Relationship Management or CRM systems have without any doubt help sales teams to enhance their performance by making them better sellers. CRM as a Sales force effectiveness strategy has played a key role in enhancing higher customer satisfaction, enhanced bottom line and swift organizational growth. Here are some of the ways how organizations can play a pivotal role in enhancing Sales force effectiveness of their sales team by grabbing sale opportunities via CRM every way possible
a. Early adoption of CRM systems as a strategy across technology platforms by Sales teams helps in better tracking and monitoring of activities.
b. CRM assists sales people spend lesser time on administrative activities, thus providing more time to concentrate on sales performance by reducing sales cycle.
c. CRM captures huge amount of sales data real time, assisting decision makers to make faster and accurate decisions via reports and other tools.
d. Business Intelligence, Forecasting, Sales planning, Setting sales goal, Marketing and Campaigning etc are easy to streamline with CRM.

CORE BANKING

Core Banking System is a software solution largely used by banks to handle their day to day transactions. Core banking system’s functionalities varies depending on the type of banking that a particular bank involves into. For example, in Retail Banking, CBS is majorly customer and transaction centric, while institutions that do securities trading, CBS is involved in buying and selling of stocks, shares and so on.
Oracle’s Flexcube Core Banking solutions and Infosys’ Finacle are some of well known core banking solutions.
VSMSoftware’s Financial Service Solutions –Core Banking, Banking Software Testing and Support, Mobility Solutions and more .

FOREIGN ACCOUNT TAX COMPLIANCE ACT (FATCA)

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act or in short FATCA is a Federal Law that is intended to identify and prevent US tax money from being evaded to outside US by its citizens. This act requires US persons to report themselves and their non-US financial accounts. FATCA enhances transparency by reinforcing information reporting and compliance with the provision of rules around the processes of documenting, reporting and withholding on a payee.

NBFC

Non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) are financial institutions that offer banking services, but do not hold a banking license. However they have to conform to banking regulations. Some of the major services that NBFCs offers are, Trading in money markets, Merger and Acquisition consulting and related services, underwriting, retirement planning, credits and loan facilities etc.
Some of the major differences between NBFCs and banks are as following
1. Non-banking financial companies as per banking regulations cannot accept deposits.
2. Non-banking financial companies cannot involve themselves into settlements and payments.
3. Non-banking financial companies cannot issue cheques drawn on itself.
4. Unlike banks, Non-banking financial companies cannot offer deposit insurance facility of Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation.

MICRO FINANCE INSTITUTIONS

Micro Finance Institutions are organizations that offer banking services to individuals belonging to low income group that otherwise wouldn’t get financial services from banks. Micro Finance Institutions are of various kinds – NGOs, Cooperative societies, credit unions, government banks etc.
Micro Finance offers these individuals way to save and borrow money. One of the major goals of Micro Financing is to act as a tool to elevate poverty by bridging gap between the low income individuals and their access to banking facilities. These institutes mainly get financial resources from mainstream financial organizations and offers support services to low income groups, mainly in the rural geographies. These low income groups/individuals include – poor families, entrepreneurs, economically-sidelined women and others. Although, MFIs have access to finance from mainstream financial institutions, many operate self sufficiently with good credit worthiness.